Avocado works best when you treat it as a source-finding assistant, not a substitute for legal advice. Ask clear questions, insist on quoted passages, and check the linked documents yourself.
Living corpus
Expect growth — and help us close gaps
The library is continuously discovered, fetched, parsed, deduplicated, embedded, and repaired. Treat missing or imperfect hits as a coverage signal, not a final answer. Full pipeline detail and how to report gaps live on the MCP setup page.
Foundations
Six rules that improve every answer
- Ask Avocado to search — say “search Avocado Legal” or “use the Avocado connector” so the AI actually queries the corpus.
- Demand quotes — ask the AI to quote the exact source text before summarising. If there is no quote, treat the point as unverified.
- Check the link — open the source document and read the passage in context.
- One topic per question — narrow questions retrieve better material than broad “tell me everything about X” requests.
- Say when nothing was found — if Avocado returns no useful passage, do not let the AI fill the gap from general knowledge without telling you.
- Keep client detail out of tool queries — prefer anonymised research questions when Avocado searches. Paste the privacy instruction from the security page at the start of a session.
What is in the corpus
Match your question to the right material
Legislation & regulations
Acts, regulations, proclamations, and official government legal texts.
Use for: “What does the Act require?”, statutory definitions, commencement, penalties.
Case law & judgments
Court decisions from the Constitutional Court, SCA, High Courts, Labour Court, and related tribunals.
Use for: precedents, interpretation of statutes, procedural rulings in reported judgments.
Rules & court procedure
Uniform Rules, court practice directives, and motion-court guidelines.
Use for: time limits, service, urgent applications, filing requirements, leave to appeal.
Commentary
Secondary material — journals, law reform reports, and explanatory writing.
Use for: background and context. Commentary is not binding authority unless you are researching commentary itself.
Question patterns
Prompts that work well
Tell the AI to search Avocado and quote sources. Adapt the bracketed parts to your matter.
Statutory provision
Search Avocado Legal legislation for the requirements to [obtain a licence / register a company / lay a criminal charge] under [Act name or subject]. Quote the relevant sections verbatim and give the source link.
Case law on a point
Using Avocado Legal case law, find judgments on [issue — e.g. dismissal for operational requirements / prescription of a debt / admissibility of hearsay]. Quote the key passages and cite the case names and neutral citations.
Court rules & procedure
Search Avocado Legal rules and procedures for the requirements to bring an [urgent application / application for leave to appeal / rule 30 application]. Quote the rule or practice direction text and link the source.
Known citation or Act number
Look up [Act 55 of 1998 / [2020] ZACC 5 / Uniform Rule 6] in Avocado Legal. Show exact metadata matches first, then quote the most relevant passages.
Privacy-safe research (recommended)
When using Avocado Legal, prefer anonymised research questions. Do not include client names, ID numbers, matter references, or privileged strategy in Avocado tool search queries. Search for legal principles, statutes, rules, and case law; quote sources and cite links. If a search would need client facts, ask me to rephrase without identifiers first.
Escalate gaps, bugs, or disagreement
If Avocado Legal returns a wrong, outdated, or garbled passage, misses a statute or judgment I know exists, or I disagree with your Avocado-based answer, call the MCP tool submit_corpus_feedback with an anonymised summary (no client names). Use feedback_type gap, bad_passage, bug, or disagreement. Include citation/title and source URL when available. Confirm the flag_id to me after submitting.
Search terms
Keywords that sharpen retrieval
- Use South African legal terms — “applicant”, “respondent”, “particulars of claim”, “section 34”, not generic synonyms alone.
- Include the court or forum — “Labour Court”, “High Court Gauteng”, “CCMA”.
- Name the instrument — “Companies Act 71 of 2008”, “Uniform Rule 30”, “PAJA”.
- For procedure, name the relief or step — “summary judgment”, “rescission”, “condonation”, “security for costs”.
- If the first search is thin, add a second narrower query rather than one very broad question.
Workflows
Practical research sequences
Drafting a letter of demand or founding affidavit
- Search legislation for the substantive duty or cause of action.
- Search case law for how courts have applied that provision.
- Search rules for any procedural prerequisites (prescription, jurisdiction, form).
- Quote only passages you have verified; build your draft from those sources.
Urgent application checklist
- Search rules and practice directives for urgency requirements and time limits.
- Search case law for how “urgency” has been assessed on similar facts.
- Ask the AI to list what the retrieved sources require — and what they do not cover.
Opinion or memorandum
- State the legal question in one sentence.
- Run separate Avocado searches for legislation, leading cases, and (if needed) commentary.
- Require a short synthesis where each proposition cites a quoted passage.
- Flag gaps explicitly: “Not found in Avocado results.”
Reading answers
How to judge a good Avocado response
Reliable
- Quotes exact wording from a source
- Provides a link or document reference you can open
- Distinguishes legislation from case law from commentary
- Says when the corpus has nothing on point
Be cautious
- Confident summary with no quoted text
- Foreign or outdated law presented as current SA law
- Commentary treated as binding precedent
- AI “fills in” gaps after a weak search
Setup
Other AI clients
Claude Desktop is the simplest path. Other tools (Claude Code, Cursor, Codex) can connect with technical setup help. Start at the get started page or email scholtzap@gmail.com.
Reporting problems
Flag bad or missing sources via MCP
Connected AIs can open an operator ticket with
submit_corpus_feedback (preferred) or
flag_legal_source for a known document/chunk id. Ask explicitly when you
disagree with an Avocado answer or want a gap logged.
- gap — statute, judgment, or instrument missing or outdated
- bad_passage — garbled OCR, wrong document, broken link, duplicate
- bug — connector or tool failure
- disagreement — you reject the AI’s Avocado-grounded conclusion
Or email scholtzap@gmail.com with:
- Your (anonymised) question
- The document title or link shown
- What was wrong or missing